Hollow
by Replicating
Summary: [The Prestige]  Albert Borden chooses his brother and never says a word. It was never really a choice.


His eyes were empty when he received the news. The letter, more specifically. The first he'd received in years.

Angier had left for America with little more than a goodbye. Had left him all the stages in London and the freedom to make them his home.

It didn't feel like victory.

* * *

Albert remembered his eyes -dark in the theater, bright in the sunlight- and the way they had clung to each other under the umbrella of a thousand promises and whispered vows. Life was beautiful and Angier was passionate and fleeting, the air thick with magic.

"I'll send for you," Angier had whispered to him, their lips barely touching. "I'll send for you, and we can be together at dawn on the new year."

But the eve of the new year came and went, and the letter never arrived. Albert stayed awake to nurse his wounded heart, and watched the sun rise alone.

Nearly a week later he found the letter under a stack of books. Everything was covered in dust, and a bit of wax from one of the candles had dripped onto the first line, obscuring the "My Dearest Alfred" that had been penned at the top in a familiar aristocratic script.

_I think of nothing but you. My instincts tell me I am wrong, that I should be satisfied with my wife and assistant; tools with which to shape a happy life. And yet my heart yearns only to share the stage with Alfred Borden, my rival and equal. Meet me outside the Pantages at ten o' the clock, and I'll gladly divulge my further aspirations. May my impatience fail to drive me mad before I see you again.  
Yours,  
R. Angier _

Angier's words were painfully saccharine, but they made Albert's heart ache, and he felt sick to have discovered the letter so late.

"Oh, that," Freddie replied when questioned. "I already took care of it. That Angier, he's bloody crazy."

Albert bit his tongue until it bled.

* * *

Another letter from Angier came the very next day. This one penned in anger, full of spite and scorn that left very little doubt in Albert's mind as to what had passed between Angier and Freddie.

Angier's writing was as distinct as ever, the script small and precise as though to hem in the emotional storm of semantics and smeared ink. Even now, his passion thrilled Albert to the very marrow of his bones, and his hands ached to hold, to touch.

Distressingly, the letter was not addressed to the usual "Alfred" but rather, to "Freddie." Albert did not know what to make of that, but he told himself he should be relieved.

* * *

Letters from Angier fairly poured in after that, and when Albert looked at Freddie and the darkness in Freddie's eyes, he had to wonder if they had been pouring out as well.

Despite them all being addressed to "Freddie," Albert opened one, and quickly got his answer. He got quite a few answers more than he had wished for, and so he didn't open any more letters. In fact, he didn't see Angier again after that. He'd long lost track of what they'd once meant to each other, so he left it to Freddie and turned a blind eye.

But when Freddie came home one night with his eyes wide with shock and his hands bruised black, Albert was forced to open himself again. He held his brother close as Freddie cried and raved and slathered hatred and abuse on Angier. He stroked his hair cautiously as Freddie told him exactly which knot he'd tied.

For Albert loved his brother, and that was all there was to do.

* * *

Two days later, wracked with guilt and grief, Freddie refused to go to Julia's funeral. So it fell to Albert to don his mourning clothes and seek forgiveness.

He didn't know what he'd say when he saw Angier, and he didn't know how he'd feel. He'd hoped that his affection for the other magician had faded and grown over, but when he saw Angier's face and saw the tears hanging from those dark lashes, Albert felt sure he would go mad with tenderness.

"Borden. I didn't expect to see you here."

He reached out with a clumsy "I'm sorry," but was met with only impassioned accusations. For a moment, Albert swore he could see a flicker of recognition in Angier's eyes, as though he'd suddenly become able to tell him from his brother, and had remembered whom it was that he loved, and who loved him back.

But then it was gone.

Gone and forgotten, he lied when Angier asked about the knot.

* * *

After that, there was a period of nothing. The merest mention of Angier's name was salt on an old wound reopened, and Albert staunchly refused to answer any of Freddie's questions. Sarah was pregnant now, and there were more important things to think about, he told himself. Home and hearth and family.

The letters had stopped, yet every playbill advertising _The Great Danton_ felt like an invitation to duel.

And duel they would, though Albert did not know it yet. He looked deep into the eyes of the man on the posters, and felt his heart smolder and burn like stirred coals.

He could not have imagined those same eyes would meet his again the following night at the debut of the bullet catch. And yet there they were, angry and jaded behind a false beard and the oily click of a cocked pistol.

"Which knot did you tie, Borden?"

"I don't know," Albert answered, wondering if Freddie even remembered.

But in the next instant, all the wondering in the world was replaced by smoke and blood and pain, the like of which Albert had never known in his life.

* * *

He let Freddie avenge him. Freddie, who filled with rage as water fills a glass, a loaded gun in his own right. Dead birds and broken fingers; the theater venting patrons like heartsblood from a fatal wound.

He thought only of Freddie trembling in his arms, the stumps of his forefingers ragged and bleeding from the block and chisel. His eyes were glazed with surprise and shame as he gazed up at his brother, his lips parting in a plea for forgiveness.

Failing to make a clean cut on the first try had been Albert's own vengeance for Freddie's theft and destruction of Angier.

It gave him no pleasure.

For Albert loved his brother, and that was all there was to do.

The introduction of Gerald Root was an unexpected boon.

Freddie laughed and spat; called him overweight, a fool, a drunk.

Albert sought him out the first night, and kissed all the stage makeup from his face.

"Magicians!" Root had exclaimed. "Let lips do what hands do!"

He tasted wrong at first. Angier had been as hot and bitter as ashes, and so the sweetness of the alcohol in Root's mouth was a strange thing. But after a mere week together, Albert was drunk too. They talked, they fucked obsessively, and on one night in three Albert would cry in Root's arms, all sorts of promises and nonsensical apologies spilling from his lips.

He told himself repeatedly that Root wasn't Angier, and there were a thousand reminders to that effect. And yet he was quick to learn exactly how many drinks it took to cover them up.

"I haven't got much money," Root said one night as they lay in bed together.

"Mine is for Sarah and the baby," Albert replied, thinking of his brother.

"We'll have to remain in London then, I suppose."

"Yes."

Root decried the seriousness in Albert's voice, ran his tongue across his unshaven jaw, and told him to quit talking as though someone had died. They had their health, their income, and each other. Root was sleeping with his employer's arch-rival and he repeatedly told Albert that that was the greatest trick of all.

But it wasn't.

It was a joke, and the hunger in Freddie and Angier's eyes wouldn't let him forget.

One week later, bound, gagged, and suspended from the roof of the theater, Root finally understood.

* * *

_Freddie,  
I'm leaving for America on the twenty-fifth, as per your instruction. This letter shall be my only goodbye. If I ever speak your name again, it shall be only to hold you as an example of inferior wizardry. You must know I despise you.  
R. Angier_

"We've ruined him," Freddie said when Albert handed him the final letter.

"_I've_ ruined him," Albert corrected.

"Right. _I've_ ruined him," Freddie repeated, eyes fixed on the torn paper in his mangled, sweating hands. "He'll never come back from America. He'll throw his bachelors' bank account on the mercy of the 'invisible world', and we'll be free."

"_I'll_ be free."

"Right."

But the spark of fever in Freddie's eye remained. Shot, drowned, buried alive, it was all there. Albert spent long hours gazing into the mirror, wondering how far he would have to follow his brother into madness before they resembled each other again.

He wondered if Angier would ever return. It almost didn't matter.

For _Le Professeur de Magie_ loved only himself, and that was all there was to do.


End file.
